Responses to viewers' questions are provided by Andrew Till, Senior Director at Motorola's Devices Business Unit, Stephen Nuttall, Director of British Sky Broadcasting's Commercial Group and Oliver Sturrock, Founder and Chief Operating Officer of WeComm.

1. Is the present gadget user friendly and easy to understand or do you have an interactive manual for the user?

Andrew Till: "Our focus is to make the user experience as simple and easy to use as possible. For example on the Z8 the sky client looks and feels like your SKY+ or SKY HD box."

Stephen Nuttall: "We think that the current application is simple and easy to use. There is a simple instruction booklet with each phone, and customers can get further information on the sky website."

2. What revenue models for mobile TV do you see for the near future?

Andrew Till: "There will be a combination of revenue streams from mobile TV, including subscription models, advertising models and prepayment. However, as we have always seen in the internet as services evolve then new business models are developed which enable the services to move in new directions."

Stephen Nuttall: "Primarily subscription and then advertising. We see the "mixed economy" model of Sky's pay-TV service as delivered on satellite being replicated, broadly speaking, on mobile."

Oliver Sturrock: "Subscription (long and short, e.g. by month or by day); per-event payment for premium events or premium on-demand content; advertising; transaction revenue share from third party interactive services."

3. How important will advertising revenues be to the success of mobile TV?

Andrew Till: "Mobile advertising will be one of the important components along with service quality, ease of use, device ergonomics etc. You need to look at all of these factors together. It is also important to look at how advertising is presented to consumers. If you do this in the same way as for traditional broadcast services you may put people off the service."

"For example many consumers snack on mobile TV consuming it in five to ten minute slots. If you have traditional advertising breaks this may be too intrusive. However if you have sponsorship, tickers at the bottom of the screen, logos in the corner etc then this may well be acceptable. The key is to understand the consumer and their preferences. The mobile phone today is a highly complex device and finely tuned to its target market and the presentation of services needs to follow the same model so that the entire value chain is working together to give the consumer the right compelling experience."

Stephen Nuttall: "It all depends on the nature of the content. For the type of content that we offer, we foresee subscription continuing to be more important than advertising."

Oliver Sturrock: "Advertising has always been an important component of any TV service and mobile will be no exception. The exciting potential in mobile is the ability to have a much closer one to one relationship with the consumer, meaning that current broadcast-style ads can be augmented or replaced with advertising that is relevant to the consumer. This is an important factor both in ensuring consumer acceptance of advertising and to generate high-value for advertisers."

4. How do we measure (per minute, bytes, titles, etc…) the cost of a mobile TV programme in order for the consumer to be prepared for the mobile phone bill?

Andrew Till: "This will very much depend on the network operator. Today we are seeing a strong trend towards flat rate tariffs and mobile TV appears to be ideal for this type of model. Indeed we have already seen this implemented in many parts of the world." Stephen Nuttall: "The data charge is included within the cost of the monthly subscription. £5 per pack per month gives unlimited viewing. As such there is no bill shock and we would not offer TV unless the data is included in this way."

"General usage of the application - say for setting a remote recording - does consume data, but only small amounts due to some aspects of WeComm's technology."

Oliver Sturrock: "Only a small number of intrepid consumers are likely to enter into a service with a variable payment model. That said, pay-per-view content can be provided on top of the subscription fees for premium events such as movies or sports events."

Stephen Nuttall: "The data charge is included within the cost of the monthly subscription. £5 per pack per month gives unlimited viewing. As such there is no bill shock and we would not offer TV unless the data is included in this way."

"General usage of the application - say for setting a remote recording - does consume data, but only small amounts due to some aspects of WeComm's technology."

Oliver Sturrock: "Only a small number of intrepid consumers are likely to enter into a service with a variable payment model. That said, pay-per-view content can be provided on top of the subscription fees for premium events such as movies or sports events."

5. How do we ensure that mobile TV is safe from spamming?

Andrew Till: "The issue of spamming is a key one. Like a number of other areas this requires all the players in the value chain to work together to ensure that the way in which mobile TV services are presented to a consumer remains highly compelling and that mobile advertising and information are served using contexually meaningful and non-intrusive methods. "

"In much the same way as plug-ins have become available to handle this issue for email I am sure that if it becomes an issue for mobile then we will see they same types of applications being developed."

Stephen Nuttall: "Given who bills for the service, I think this is a mobile operator question and would be handled in the same way as any other fraud prevention that they do."

"General usage of the application - say for setting a remote recording - does consume data, but only small amounts due to some aspects of WeComm's technology."

Oliver Sturrock: "As far as assuring the consumer that it is safe, I believe that because the content is delivered through an application interface with strong security, rather than by cobbling together functionality from SMS and WAP components, that the experience is much more trustworthy, from a user-experience perspective as well as a security one."

6. Do you see that after some years the mobile phone includes both DVB-H and DVB-T receivers or do you see that better quality for bigger screens come through faster internet connections?

Andrew Till: "Motorola sees both paths developing over time. DVB-H and DVB-T have a lot to offer in terms of quality and access to existing content but do require a new network to be created. At the same time, higher speed 3G and 4G networks will offer the capacity to support streaming TV services over the traditional mobile networks. In many cases we will see these two technologies being used together to offer maximum choice, interactive services, complementary coverage and flexible capacity."

Oliver Sturrock: "Both. I believe that always-on, flat-fee Wimax technology could pose a significant threat to DVB-H as the predominant technology for distribution of MobileTV. This latter approach will most likely fit better with broadcasters' other ambitions in IPTV and greater interactivity and on-demand content for the set top box."

7. IPTV is distinguishing itself from TV on the strength of its "interactive" nature. What impact will it have on availability of interactive content / innovations and popularity of services of Mobile TV and vice versa?

Andrew Till: "Moving forward we believe that interactive TV services have a lot to offer. We know from traditional TV services that interactive capabilities move the experience to a new level and we expect the same for mobile. Being able to interact with a program - selecting a camera angle, for example, or voting on reality show evictions - makes the experience much more immersive and there is no reason that this should not happen for mobile users."

"We also see a lot of potential for the mobile itself to interact with the home TV and set top box to further enhance the viewer's experience. Perhaps when the user arrives home the TV will automatically tune to the same channel as the phone. The handset could become a remote control and present users with supplemental information that they don't want to have on the main display. This is just one example of the types of services that are under development and will be rolled out going forwards."

Oliver Sturrock: "Broadcasters will be attracted to the idea of having a single infrastructure that can run these services, regardless of target platform. It is likely that consumers will take all of their IPTV services with them on their mobile and consume in a similar mode."

8. Does DBV-H facilitate the sending of triggers or information to the TV viewer on the phone that could be used for menus, information, triggering applications such as sending text messages, thereby initiating an interactive return leg via the cell networks?

Andrew Till: "This could be possible in the future. Today DVB-H is more about transmitting the TV service rather than the full interactive suite of services. However, like all technologies it will continue to evolve and the types of services that we deliver will be enhanced. But DVB-H will need to inter-work with traditional cellular services to provide the back channel support for these services."

Oliver Sturrock: "It does, although this is not the only mechanism for creating interactivity using a back-channel. A more capable route would be the combination of DVB and some IP channel such as GPRS or 3G. WeComm's technology already provides synchronisation of events across multiple channels so that a broadcast may contain triggers for voting and competitions and so-on in sync with the event. This mechanism uses the IP channel to achieve synchronisation, deliver the interactive event content and provide the back-path for any resulting user interaction."

9. Can advertising subsidise mobile TV to make it free to users?

Andrew Till: "Yes this is certainly one of the models that we would expect to see develop. There is no reason why the mobile market will not follow or exploit some of the business models of the traditional broadcast market"

Stephen Nuttall: "I doubt it"

Oliver Sturrock: "Yes, I believe it can, although the more traditional model where some parts are free to air and others are paid-for-subscriptions, all in conjunction with advertising is likely."

10. What about programme labelling and protection of minors?

Andrew Till: "This is a very serious issue and something that the whole industry is working on. There are a range of different solutions to the challenge of conditional access including restricting what is broadcast, special tariffs for certain types of content and parental access codes for specific channels (much the same way that parents can today bar selected phone numbers)."

"Clearly it is in everyone's interest to ensure that the right approach is applied to this opportunity and that minors are not exposed to inappropriate content. We would also expect that the existing national laws on content broadcasting will be applied to mobile TV services."

Stephen Nuttall: "We operate the channels as if they were mainstream TV channels. So the watershed applies, for instance, to protect minors. EPG data is carried across too"

Oliver Sturrock: "The technology that runs the Sky Anytime Mobile service allows for a great deal of personalisation of the content before it is delivered to a handset. This will certainly extend to providing protection of certain consumers against content that they should not see"

The live Q&A has now closed. Thanks for all your questions please keep posting and we will do our best to answer as many as we can and put the responses online. Keep checking this page over the next few days to see updates. On behalf of the panel and our sponsor Wecomm thanks for watching.

Informa Telecoms and Media